New Year's Resolutions

This year I have only a few and none of the old ones that I used to have. I have given up on dieting. I figure it will come when it comes and not before, so there is no reason to put it on my list as it has been for many years now.

1. Be more organized. This is one that has been on the list for some time and since I never seemed to make it past the dieting one, this one hasn't seen the light of day. Everything has a place and if it doesn't then it is going out of here. My husband has been on a roll in the past couple of days working toward this goal, so I am picking up his energy and moving forward.

2. Create more and give. I have made the commitment to use my handwork talents to help others and I will be donating more this year than in years past. More newborn hats, blankets and such. I have a few great people and organizations who I have been researching and will be sending off my donations there. I have one box ready to go already with 14 squares to be put together for a baby blanket.

3. Walk more. I have a treadmill which needs dusting and a neighbor who I am going to hopefully convince to walk with me a couple times a week. At Disney World I wore my pedometer and one day I reached 29,000 steps! I want to just get to 8,000 steps a day to start.

4. Plan at least one family outing or trip a month. This past year we didn't use the trailer but twice the whole year. I want to go somewhere at least once a month with the family. We don't have to use the trailer or go anywhere fancy but just go somewhere together. January is already planned!! We are going to Great Wolf Lodge!

5. Boost our savings. This is a necessity for us and while it is number 5 on my list it is no less important than the others. I want to double our savings this year from last year.

What are your New Year's Resolutions?

If you haven't already read this, you should! Read my entry below about our New Year's Eve Party.

Just a few last minute things

I have never been so organized for a trip than this one. The trailer is almost all packed. Food is packed, clothes are packed for the kids and I am almost done packing me. Beds are made, kitchen floor is clean (thanks to my son tonight), and just have a few last minute things to tidy up and get in the trailer. Really we just need to get our toothbrushes that morning, pillows, and the coffee maker and we are set to sail.

I watched a special on Food Network last night about the giant gingerbread house, the lights down main street, and the holiday extras they put into making our experiences "magical". I tell you I took NOTES while watching it! I am WAY more excited than the kids are.

We got them all matching tshirts (well ones for us too) and I am going to give them to everyone the morning we leave so they can wear their Mickey shirts to school that day. I am wearing mine too!! Too fun...

So I have finished addressing our Christmas cards and they are stamped and will go in the mail tomorrow and I packed my address book and will be sending out post cards while we are there. I am hoping that Disney has wifi somewhere and we can use our laptop to up load a few pictures to you all via email. If you want to be on my email list, email me your address if you don't think I have it.

Wow, the adrenaline of excitement is running through my veins right now and I can FEEL it!

And for this trip we got our handy-dandy housesitter to stay here while we are gone. He loves it here because we have a big backyard for his two ginormous German Shepards. Unfortunately he doesn't always find all the land mines in the backyard and the kids find them later, tracking it in the house! Yuck! Oh well, we still love him.

Progress

Today we set out to try to accomplish some cleaning today. So we started with the living room. Now we don't use this room except for holidays and birthdays. It usually ends up a catch all room from time to time and we have to clean it out when we want to use it. It is supposed to be our "formal" room. We have a white couch in there along with white patterned wing chairs and our piano. Today it was easy to clean as there wasn't much in there that wasn't supposed to be there. I began with a quick removal of all things not belonging in the room and then began vacuuming. I then decided that we needed to rearrange the furniture. It took three trys to get it right and I am pleased with the results. I will have to post a picture for you all to see.

We moved the couch from one side to the other and put the wing chairs opposite the couch. The piano is still at the far wall. Now, we only took out one piece of furniture which was a sofa table but the result was a much larger looking room. I think it was from the rearranging not the removal of the table.

I am so pleased with our results I think I will just live in that room only and not bother with the rest of the house. Unfortunately, the computer resides in a messy room. Tomorrow I really hope to tackle another room.

Instant Messaging

Our first computer that was hooked up to the internet or had the capability was in 1992. I had bought a computer with graduation money from College. It had a 102 mb harddrive, and that was an upgrade. It had Windows 3.0. Then I upgraded to 3.1 when it came out. I was on AOL as soon as it came out and I was one of the ones who paid BY THE HOUR! There were months that my AOL bill was quite expensive. I want to say it was $9.95 for the first 5 hours or something like that and then you had to pay for anything over that. It was dial up and the internet was fairly safe. One of the fun things on AOL was the chat rooms and I would spend a lot of time there, just chatting away. Then we had Instant Messaging. Wow... what fun when my college friends also got on AOL and we could talk online!

I loved it when AOL went to just a monthly service charge and you could be online as much as you want. Well there wasn't much out there other than what AOL had on their servers. But as time went by more and more websites were being formed and you could truly start surfing the net.

When we moved into this house, my husband was now in the IT profession (before he was a tennis pro) and he set up our computer and internet to go straight out to the net using netscape. I literally went through AOL withdraw. I tried to set up an AIM account and it didn't do much for me and eventually I found that life without AOL was fine and I found other websites to surf. But I missed instant messaging.

Life goes on and a few upgrades to the computer, no more dial up but now a cable modem and DSL. I still find myself on the computer a lot and hadn't missed anything since blogging.

However, a friend of mine mentioned that we could instant message each other through MSN. We both have Hotmail and they have recently been doing some upgrades and boom there it was in my face yesterday. So I did what it said, followed the directions, and downloaded the necessary programs and BOOM I now have instant messaging capabilities.

Wow, I didn't realize I had missed it so much. It is a good thing that I can't access it at work (tried), because I wouldn't get anything done otherwise.

My Successes

I have realized that I need to count my little successes to feel even a bit better about the huge list of things to do compared to what actually gets accomplished.

So this weekend I:
1. actually got to my friend's house and completed 13 pages scrapbooking. That was Friday evening and today I realized that I had already made Caroline's 2nd birthday book. So now we have two of the same event, damn.
2. planted 3 tomato plants in my little garden next to the house. We found out that we lost a bunch of broccoli and tomato plants as well as all our lettuce in our larger garden down the street. Deer came and ate them all.
3. have done approximately 7 loads of laundry in the past two days. I still have a bunch to do AND I haven't done my clothes in two weeks!
4. watched two soccer games, one for each of the girls. I sat in the rain...
5. cleaned out the front closet and part of the living room. I still have the kitchen, rest of the living room, dining room and family room oh and the bathroom to do before Tuesday evening for Bunko. (it is at my house this month)

So with that list I hope everyone knows why, just why most of the time I feel like I am moving ever so slightly backwards.